Random Mists of Pandaria Discussion

[Kaylia]

They could easily change threat generation to be proportional to your character level (lvl/monster lvl). There is no reason to scale threat number with damages.

[Siniroth]

Spoiler: show

Classes: General

• Prime glyphs may be removed.
• Balancing low level combat will get some extra attention in MoP.
• In 5.0 dispels will have a cooldown and duration more like Counterspell but get all buffs or debuffs at once to make them more tactical.
• Intellect will no longer directly increase the size of player mana pools. Healers will use Spirit for mana regeneration.
• Since so many of the talents focus on survivability, movement, and utility we are skeptical that there will ever be a talent build that is the perfect build for every PvE fight in the game.
• The value of primary stats will move closer to secondary stats, and the value of secondary stats will be brough closer together to make gear choices easier and better.
• 'Active Mitigation' for each tanking class could be implemented, which means that tanks will continue to do similar damage relative to DPS specs, but that their skill usage in combat will directly impact their ability to survive and mitigate damage. Options like no longer generating rage from damage taken, only from ability usage and white swings are being considered. For example, Shield Slam could generate rage instead of costing it, and Shield Block could cost a large amount of Rage, but have no cooldown. This would lead to offensive stats (such as haste) increasing rage generation, and therefore increasing mitigation.
• Hybrid classes may become more popular due to the lack of a hybrid tax and increased utility they bring, but steps will be taken to make sure the pure DPS classes don't vanish.
• Wands will become a type of main hand weapon.
• Melee spell effects may get improvements in 5.0 since their attacks just aren't as flashy as the casters' attacks.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/db/im...isc_pet_03.png Monk (Forums)

• As a Monk you can heal competitively without ever having to target a friendly player.
• Monks will be similar to how a Discipline Priest can heal or cast Smite.
• Roll may cost mana and have a cooldown once you're in healer stance.
• There's a talent that changes roll into a different ability that heals and does damage to targets you "roll" through, which makes it interesting for the healer Monk.
• Balancing a non mana using healer would be too hard, so Monks are going to use mana to heal.
• All Monks (DPS, Tank and Healer) will use the "dual combo point" resource (Force).
• Monk tanks will choose between using two different types of mechanics through Dark and Light. For example, Dark may be an absorption shield which is larger depending on how many Force you consume. And Light may be increased avoidance. You can build up and store Dark for a big shield when you need it, or if you don't really need much self-survivability you then you can just spend your Dark Force on DPS instead.
• The Brewmaster also has drinks as short-term buffs, which restore Light or Dark Force, Chi etc.
• All Monks will use similar stances and styles, but there will be slight variation across the races.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...athknights.gif Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Gorefiend's Grasp works like mind sear - only enemy targets are pulled, but you can center the gravity well effect on either an enemy, an ally or yourself.
• The Frost Presence bugs with Runic Power generation will be fixed in 4.3.
• Runeforging will get some changes to make it less boring.
• Frost Presence isn't ideal right now, in 5.0 both DPS Presences will have more clearly defined purposes.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ns/idruids.gif Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• The new Druid talent trees are trying to bring back the hybrid part of the druid class.
• Resto Druids will get a baseline replacement for Barkskin that will be able to be cast on other players.
• The Nurturing Instinct talent will be baseline to both Feral and Guardian Druids.
• A new talent which grants attack power based on Intellect for Restoration and Balance Druids will be added.
• Incarnation for Balance transforms the Druid in to the Chosen of Elune Form, which currently increases spell damage done and Solar and Lunar energy generated.
• In 5.0 Mangle will no longer cause a bleed damage debuff, and will be usable from any facing.
• Guardians (bears) will have Mangle, but not Shred. Mangle and Shred will both exist for Feral (cats).
• Shred will offer slightly more overall DPS compared to Mangle if you are able to stay behind the target. Once Glyph of Shred works from Mangle as well as Shred, the difference between a Mangle and a Shred rotation is actually fairly small (in the 5% range).
• Feral Charge and Stampede are becoming part of Wild Charge, so you can select not to have that complexity with Ravage.
• A possible level 87 ability for all Druids called Symbiosis that will add flexibility, utility, and survivability for the Druid.
• Heart of the Wild is intended for encounters where there is a period where increased healing is needed. Master Shapshifter is for encounters where the Druid would need to switch between healing and DPS. Disentanglement is for when less shifting is needed but a well timed one would help.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...s/ihunters.gif Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• With Aspect of the Cheetah on you won't get dazed when attacked, but the speed bonus will be turned off when you get hit.
• There has been some discussion of a possible "pet stampede" spell. Nothing is set in stone on it though.
• Snake trap is a utility trap and will not have it's damage buffed.
• Hunters will lose parry as part of the trade-off for losing minimum range.
• Transmorph Trap is a nature trap that allows you to cast Scare Beast on the transmorphed target. It will have a similar duration to Freezing Trap.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ons/images.gif Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Frost has a lot of CC currently and just adding more every expansion only makes this worse. Having to choose between Ring of Frost and Cone of Cold allows a choice between two interesting CC and allows the space for adding more interesting options later.
• Frost will no longer trade survivability for DPS in 5.0.
• Fire is RNG based by design and working as desired for now.
• Arcane Barrage will be added to the Arcane rotation to make it more mobile and less boring.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/.../ipaladins.gif Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Inquisition may get a glyph which would significantly increase its duration, at a cost of slightly reducing its effect
• In 5.0 Judgment will have a 6 sec cooldown, 30yd range, and generate one Holy Power. In 4.3, the set bonus should be fairly accessible, to get the Holy Power generation.
• Word of Glory does not need a cooldown in 5.0. Prot can choose whether to use it for healing, Holy Shield for absorption, or Shield of the Righteous for block.
• In 5.0 Divine Purpose was moved to a talent to reduce RNG, so if you skip that one then the main source of RNG will just be Art of War procs.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...s/ipriests.gif Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Leap of Faith will continue to have a facing requirement because healers should not just be staring at health bars but should also be paying attention to the raid environment.
• There will be no changes to PoH being restricted by group in raids.
• Lightwell may get a new model that is "taller" and make it less of an issue to see it and click it.
• In 5.0, you will never "cap" on Shadow Orbs. Mind Blast will cost 1 Orb, and have no cooldown.
• Holy Nova may become Discipline only, and interact with Evangelism in some way.
• Spirit Shell is a new cast-time shield spell for Discipline priests coming in 5.0 that does not cause Weakened Soul.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ns/irogues.gif Rogue (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• The idea of "Rogues don't bring anything we need, so we don't want them." is not cool. A legendary is not the answer, but they will work on fixing this.
• Rogues will be able to use one damage poison and one utility poison without losing the damage benefits of multiple damage poisons.
• Energy model feels one of the most fluid resource models in the game.
• Addressing ramp up times by removing Deadly Poison stacks and making Bandits Guile an inherent buff on the Rogue.
• Vendetta opening up the ability for Rogues to operate at nearly full damage whilst at range from their target.
• Killing Spree will allow you to control how often and how many times you teleport.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...s/ishamans.gif Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Elemental Harmony does not apply to Fire totems, and does not allow you to drop multiple of the same totem, just multiple of the same element type of totem.
• The core shaman buffs (like Strength of Earth and Windfury) will become passive auras on the shaman, the way Unleashed Rage currently works.
• 2pc T12 bonus was overpowered, so it got nerfed and they slightly buffed the damage of the Fire Elemental.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/.../iwarlocks.gif Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• New pet models are not coming anytime soon.
• Pets will be untied from the spec and become a utility choice.
• Grimoire of Supremacy allows you to upgrade your Felguard into a Wrathguard.
• Pet Twisting for Demonology will be eliminated.
• Each spec may get a different version of Demon Soul.
• Soul Shards are passively regenerated out of combat. (1 per 45 sec), or by Drain Soul, even when you don't kill the target.
• Soulstone will indeed get a 40yd range in 4.3.
• With Kil'jaeden cunning, if currently a spell requires movement to cancel it then once movement happen the cast time will be reduced to half speed for the rest of the cast. This is even if you immediately stop moving.
• A system that allows you to refresh Corruption, UA or Bane of Agony up to 6 seconds before the DoT falls off without clipping any ticks has been created.
• Casting Incinerate on an immolated target builds up Infernal Embers, which increase the power of your next single Conflagrate or Soul Fire by 10% each. That ability uses all of the embers you have. As you generate more and more embers, your character slowly ignites, until you're basically a walking torch. Infernal Embers currently have no cap, but we'll likely add one before Mists ships.
• Malefic Grasp replaces Shadow Bolt for Affliction. It is a channeled nuke which increases the damage of your DoTs on the target by increasing their tick rate by 100%.
• Soulburn has a 15 second cooldown, but each ability can only be soulburned once a minute. New Soulburn abilities such as Soulburn: Curse - your Curses apply to all targets within Y yards of the target, will be added.
• Shadowbolt is base Level 1 ability, transforms at Level 40 dependant on spec. Malefic Grasp for Affliction, Incinerate for Destruction & Demonic Slash for Demonology (Whilst in Metamorphasis).

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/.../iwarriors.gif Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Arms and Protection will both get Blood and Thunder.
• Berserker Stance may become a +AE damage stance with no stance penalties and restrictions, allowing you to use Battle Stance for single targets.
• Wild Strike is an off-hand attack without Slam's cast time, and with the MS debuff, replacing Furious Attacks. The Bloodsurge proc then lets you do 3 cheap Wild Strikes on a 1 sec GCD.
• Intercept will be removed, Charge cooldown duration will be reduced by talents to even it out.
• Rage is supposed to be unpredictable, but dual-wielding warrior should have enough combat events occurring that the randomness is smoothed out in practice. Hit and Expertise can be utilized to reduce the randomness if desired.
• Some core rotational abilities will be changed to actually generate Rage instead of consuming it in 5.0.

Dungeons & Raids

• New raiding model that gives 8 buffs; Health, Attack Power, Spell Power, Melee Haste, Spell Haste, Crit, Mastery and Primary Stats.

PvP

• You shouldn't be killing healers just because you burst them down and keep them interrupted, but because you cause them to have to use mana inefficiently
• Resilience as a base stat is to make players who primarily do PvE content able to enter the PvP space with their PvE gear and remain competitive.

User Interface

• The option of increasing the number of character slots players have is being explored.
• Changing Talents and Glyphs will have a consumable cost similar to Dust of Disappearance. There will still be trainers that you can talk to in order to change talents as well.

I like the potential changes to lock, might go back to that for my main if it feels smooth. Having a cast time shield for disc is going to be fun.

[BadKarma]

I love the Spirit Shell thing. Also I may have to level a lock

[Gulkeeva]

oh noes my parry on hunter (like I ever actually parried anything while stun locked for 15 seconds, or a warrior charge spam stun, or dk abilities).

[Correction]

Malefic Grasp sounds awesome for raids.
Rogues don't give a shit about utility poisons. Why is Crippling Poison still even in the game?

[Boyiee]

Really like all the lock changes, really mad that it makes me want to play lock because I keep telling myself to main something with at least 2 roles and am not sure I want a pet class for arenas. Fuck you blizzard.

[Gulkeeva]

Hoping they give hunters a bit of a boost come 5.0
From what i seen so far 4.3 , hunters getting the short end of the stick this round so far ;/

[Plow]

Fights don't vary that much, they never have. You need runspeed for target swaps, you are never swapping targets at ranged every 4 seconds. There hasn't been a fight yet, there won't be a fight like that.

I'm not sure exactly what you were saying here, and I'm not exactly caught up on the expansion info so this may be entirely pointless but...

Also, I haven't been playing for most of cata so using old examples lol.

If by at ranged you're talking about anyone, including ranged people, I can name dozens of fights, the first off the top of my head would have been twin valks and saurfang.

As for ret paladins specifically, fights with constant very fast target switches sometimes including distance:

ToC: Jarax, faction champs, Anub
ICC: LDW, Gunship, Putricide, Princes, VDW, Sindra, about 1/3 of the time during LK.


Sooo, yeah, there's a reason that pretty much every melee's first priority in enchants and crap is figuring out where the movement speed is going to be, regardless if it's for pvp or pve.

Of course, at the time that post was made you guys were discussing the talents without having actually seen the new ones yet, so meh, discussion may have completely changed, I've still got a few pages to finish reading lol.

[FailureMidgard]

I'm not sure exactly what you were saying here, and I'm not exactly caught up on the expansion info so this may be entirely pointless but...

Also, I haven't been playing for most of cata so using old examples lol.

If by at ranged you're talking about anyone, including ranged people, I can name dozens of fights, the first off the top of my head would have been twin valks and saurfang.

Nah, I meant switching from one target to another as a melee person with the 2nd target being a sizeable distance away from you where you have to close some range.

As for ret paladins specifically, fights with constant very fast target switches sometimes including distance:

ToC: Jarax, faction champs, Anub
ICC: LDW, Gunship, Putricide, Princes, VDW, Sindra, about 1/3 of the time during LK.

I'm not saying it never happens, I'm saying it's never such a clusterfuck that you absolutely care about passive runspeed over active. Discussing specifics on those fights is kinda useless really as strategy on some of them may vary from guild to guild and heroic vs nonheroic. From my experience though, most strategies included minimizing melee movement and increasing their uptime. Doing Anub intelligently included cleaving the adds and tanking them at Anub. Valks intelligent strategies again had the 2 on top of each other for fast switches, Jaraxx I seem to recall cleaving the big chick on top of Jaraxx, and melee ignored infernals. LDW also consisted of adds being brought to the center to be cleaved/etc (at least on heroic...normal mode was a faceroll and had shitawful strats, but sometimes left melee on LDW fulltime not even switching to adds). Putricide I'll grant maybe, but even so, in relation to the discussion at hand, you could judge every slime for a much higher runspeed boost when needed, so I'm not sure it really changes anything I said. Princes main movement was on target swaps, then also on the move out for lightning thing that I don't recall the name on, the target swaps were at predictable times where one could definitely time a burst movement ability if one had it.
Valithra and Gunship are really the best examples you have, but really thats maybe only on 10man where everyone had to do almost everything. 25man on both fights required much less movement and melee could really "camp" one area.
Sindragosa was full of all sorts of downtime, I'm not really sure what you're referring to there, switching to kill iceblocks when Sindragosa wasn't even in range? You can't even have every DPS on the iceblocks, I don't see how speed matters there...if it's moving out of the aoe frost thing, sure, but again, predictable and burst>passive.
LK had some movement, but the target swaps to Valks occurred when they were within melee range, so runspeed didn't do much there. Target swaps on transitions were similar, no need for runspeed. I don't see this as being a very useful thing to point out.

My point is you need runspeed to up DPS when you have to move a significant distance to DPS. My claim is there are virtually no fights in the game right now where a 4sec burst of speed on a 10sec cd that is going to be worse than a passive speed boost of a lesser proportion, because you don't generally swap more often than once per 10 seconds.


Sooo, yeah, there's a reason that pretty much every melee's first priority in enchants and crap is figuring out where the movement speed is going to be, regardless if it's for pvp or pve.

Of course, at the time that post was made you guys were discussing the talents without having actually seen the new ones yet, so meh, discussion may have completely changed, I've still got a few pages to finish reading lol.[/QUOTE]

[niwaar]

My point is you need runspeed to up DPS when you have to move a significant distance to DPS. My claim is there are virtually no fights in the game right now where a 4sec burst of speed on a 10sec cd that is going to be worse than a passive speed boost of a lesser proportion, because you don't generally swap more often than once per 10 seconds.

This is a good point, but then you look closer. If we can make one assumption about all three new talents and say they all will not stack with movement speed enchants. With that assumption, you can pretty much rule out the new PoJ as being more useful than the others in most situations. Unless tanking tactics change you will be using your HP when you hit 3. The same can be said for Retribution. Thus the average speed% for these two specs is ~15%. Assuming that the movement speed enchants remain statistically worth having, then you are giving up the same average % as you have been giving up with the current talent.

I for one, believe that we will see this changed to something passive+speed per HP. Hell, ferals are getting a free 30% just for being in cat form.

In the end, a lot of talents are going to change. The Paladin tree has a lot of questionable talents as it is. Ones that are both problematic or ones like PoJ that are just overreaching trying to use a "newer" mechanics.

[Kaylia]

^
He also forget that judgement is most likely going to be part of the rotation, and that lagging isn't always preferable.

[FailureMidgard]

^
He also forget that judgement is most likely going to be part of the rotation, and that lagging isn't always preferable.

Not forgetting that at all...the point is that sitting on HoPo is a far far far larger loss in DPS than skipping out on judgement. In fact, the current top Ret parse on Baleroc uses judgement on average once per 11.5 seconds even though it's an 8 second cooldown because it's not that high on priority list. On top of that, it makes up for a grand total of 3.4% of his damage. It hits 1/3rd as hard as TV, and you're -potentially- missing out on part of 1 judgement once every time movement comes up (on Baleroc, that's like once per 50-55 seconds when countdown is a possibility, so you'd lose like maybe 20 seconds of judgement max on a 4min fight, or a whopping 140 dps. It's a meaningless loss. The 4 times you have to delay it in said 4min fight is actually already less of a loss than a single time you sit on 3 HoPo for movespeed...(not to mention when you sit on 3 HoPo it's amost not worth CSing.

Re: Niwaar.
I have no idea what your point is. In the current game however, that PoJ is unlikely to stack with runspeed, the 1min 1 will, and the judgement one could go either way (I'd lean towards not stacking though). Permanent-ish effects do not stack with runspeed, regardless of if they are buffs or not (Cheetah, Ghost Wolf, UHP, other talents)....this is referring to ones that can be permanent in combat. Burst effects (Darkflight, Sprint, Dash) all stack with boot enchant. I agree however it's too soon to talk specifics, but my point had nothing to do with specifics for when they are released - merely that if you implemented it now, one would be best and the others would lag behind (and I think the new PoJ is crap), and when it is implemented, again, 1 will be best and the others will fall behind.

[Kaylia]

There is 10 billions reasons why you're wrong, but I'm not going throught this again. Using Cataclysm parse to support your opinion is fucking retarded when Judgement is going to grand Holy Power in MoP, and that number are very likely to change.

[FailureMidgard]

There is 10 billions reason why you're wrong, but I'm not going throught this again. Using Cata parse to support your opinion is fucking retarded when judgement is going to be a source of holy power in MoP, and the ratio are very likely to change.

If only this were a valid argument against anything I'm saying.

I am saying if you give me a set of variables and parameters, I will give you an optimal solution. Since we are entirely clueless as to said variables and parameters in MoP, it's a pointless task to try to tackle which is best in MoP, however, the fact remains that one will be best. I tend to think that the various fights (parameters) will not change enough to change the optimal solution. In the meanwhile, I am illustrating my point by talking about Cata, and showing 2 things:
1. There is a best solution in Cata.
2. The fights to not vary enough to change this best solution.

Let me give you an example with numbers.

y=x+42
y=x^2
y=1

Simple math says the intersection of these 2 curves is at x=7. However, if we look at the region close to x=3, (lets say +/- 2), x+42 is strictly larger than y=x^2. Is it possible for y=x^2 to win? Of course. Is it possible for y=1 to win? Yep. But when the range of data we are looking at doesn't vary that much, y=x+42 wins out.

Furthermore (and this is basic probability), if you assume a continuous random distribution, the probability that x=7 is 0. That's right, flat out 0. This is the chance that Blizzard tunes their fights perfectly to make them even. ZERO.

[CoronA1979]

Why do people even try to fucking argue with him....

/whirlwind

[BadKarma]

Failure are you asian? It'd explain the massive number boner.

[Kaylia]

Simple math says the intersection of these 2 curves is at x=7. However, if we look at the region close to x=3, (lets say +/- 2), x+42 is strictly larger than y=x^2. Is it possible for y=x^2 to win? Of course. Is it possible for y=1 to win? Yep. But when the range of data we are looking at doesn't vary that much, y=x+42 wins out.

That's some impressive high school mathematics right here...If only you had heard of best/worst/median case, and would understand the difference between theoretical and experimental parameters, you could write a model that make sense.

Oh, and what's about the "survivability" parameter that you completely omits from your models? How are you going to "weight" a factor that has an arbitrary weight?


And saying that Blizzard can't fine tune an ability like this when you pretend that they are easy to min/max is also ridiculous.

[FailureMidgard]

Failure are you asian? It'd explain the massive number boner.

Nope. :/ Just my bachelor's degree (though I'm applying now to go back for a math phd starting next fall!)

Kaylia, you aren't even worth responding to, but I will anyway. You're just spewing shit without any clear understanding of well, anything. This has nothing to do with anything you are saying. It's as bad as when people jump on the "it doesn't scale" boat without even thinking twice about if that fucking matters. 700 spellpower or 5% spellpower, which is better?! Well, in the realm of "Cataclysm" the answer is 700 spellpower. Period. End of story. No ifs, no ands, no buts. This is what I was trying to illustrate. It doesn't matter if there's some theoretical point that it changes, in the realm of realistic that point doesn't exist.

And I have years of Blizzard failing to fine tune shit just like this that says no, they can't. And I don't blame them, they have a lot on their plate, and if they try to perfectly balance this, they have to look at repercussions on other class and overall balance, etc. They can't guess everything every player will do, as they've said time and time again. They try the best they can, but they miss things, and players find those things.

[Kaylia]

Did you seriously compare spellpower and % spellpower, two stats that raise the exact same things by different amount, to a situational proc that offer differents benefit that can't easily be compared?

Just because the optimal situation can be found accurately in certain situation doesn't mean it can generalized to everything.

Nope. :/ Just my bachelor's degree (though I'm applying now to go back for a math phd starting next fall!)

You won't last 10 minutes.

[Correction]

can the both of you stop posting speculative, e-peen lasso contest bullshit? Like, forever? The fucking thread's a mess of it now.